Minerva

A Japanese team has come up with an automated electrocardiogram based screening tool for obstructive sleep apnoea. They used the tool to detect cyclic variation of heart rate in a large scale controlled clinical setting, having applied the algorithm to electrocardiograms extracted from all night polysomnograms recorded in over 862 people referred for a diagnostic sleep study. The cyclic variation of heart rate index performed well in identifying patients with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnoea, and performance was unaffected by older age or cardiac autonomic dysfunction (Circulation Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology 2010; doi:10.1161/circep.110.958009).

A systematic review of randomised controlled trials that gave mothers vitamin A supplements after delivery has failed to find any benefit to their breastfed babies. Neither mortality nor morbidity in the first year of life was improved by maternal supplementation. The seven trials were …